That's a good question I was looking around to find one with good reviews for Haswell, but none came up. I am looking around for one right now. Any suggestions? I'm not looking to get too greedy on the account of CPU overclocking, but let's say, 4.5GHz should be achievable on such system with a good aftermarket cooler?

P.S. I don't trust water-cooling systems, many start showing problems after a year of use, like corrosion.

It's not about the cost, it is about reliability of the system and its data. I usually have the system on one SSD and all my projects and personal data on another. The system I'm retiring was the same, only I had Intel X25-M 160GB for the OS and same but 80GB for the other stuff. None ever showed any problem ever since purchased in late 2009.

System SSD-s are a lot more likely to die than ones used for personal data. In my case a system SSD would be addressed at least 10 times more.

This is not primarily a gaming machine like vitaly said. He is a developer, so this will be a workstation. He will most likely put the drives in raid 1 (what is your plan VitalyT?).

Nice build overall man. I think you could have downgraded the gpu since sc2 is not that demanding. But after all, you are gonna be gaming at 2560x1440. Best of luck.

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I did raid 1 configuration in my previous rig, and decided I will no longer be needed it. Samsung 840 Pro should perform roughly two times faster than Intel X25 I had, but even that one was so fast, I never wanted any more out of it. For things like Visual Studio 2010/2012 and VMW such SSD as Samsung 840 Pro is more than sufficient. I prefer using extra SSD just to keep system and personal data separate. It is more reliable and safer that way.

As I noted before, I use DELL U3014, which is 2560x1600, so even in SC-2 I can appreciate perfect FPS at ultra settings. My other nostalgic favorite is Unreal 3. Both games can can put a good load on GPU in 2560x1600 at ultra settings, and GTX 780 is the right card to get good FPS out of both games.

I did raid 1 configuration in my previous rig, and decided I will no longer be needed it. Samsung 840 Pro should perform roughly two times faster than Intel X25 I had, but even that one was so fast, I never wanted any more out of it. For things like Visual Studio 2010/2012 and VMW such SSD as Samsung 840 Pro is more than sufficient. I prefer using extra SSD just to keep system and personal data separate. It is more reliable and safer that way.

As I noted before, I use DELL U3014, which is 2560x1600, so even in SC-2 I can appreciate perfect FPS at ultra settings. My other nostalgic favorite is Unreal 3. Both games can can put a good load on GPU in 2560x1600 at ultra settings, and GTX 780 is the right card to get good FPS out of both games.

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2560x1600 is even more demanding, so the 780 is a good choice. As for keeping files separate, that is a good move.

An update, after I received all the hardware and put it all together....

First of all, I couldn't get over the fact just how colossal the CPU cooler is, Noctua NH-D14, but then I couldn't believe just how great this thing really, it is one component worth spending on! It is so incredibly quiet, I can absolutely not hear the system, even if I open the side cover. This is the first power desktop I assembled that makes zero noise. And I didn't even think it was possible.

The CPU was easy to set to 4.6GHz, no problems there, but then I ran into issues with something else, and for the sake of keeping everything in check I set it back to its nominal speed.

At nominal speeds on all of the components the system rating is as shown below:

This card simply doesn't work. It has serious driver issues (under Win7 and Win8 both). I'm chasing it up with ASUS right now, and will later on try to over-clock the system once again and publish the updated rating here...

I understand the joke, but come-on, that's just for i7-4770K @ 3.5 GHz, I haven't rated it when it is @ 4.6 GHz yet

It probably will reach 9.0. A higher score would be for the upcoming hexa-core Ivy Bridge Extreme and then Haswell Extreme. But even they should leave couple notches for dual-CPU workstations to top it all the way to 9.9

I am already in trouble trying to put all that power to proper use. Everything I throw at is just flying without any slow down. I use VS2012, debugging app that's using local SQL2012 Express, plus have VMW running in the background, and I don't bother unloading any of those when switching over SC-2 on a break

One thing bothers me though. I switched off virtual memory, but the memory didn't go up after that, not by a tiny step. I got 32GB of fastest RAM, but even with all the load, I cannot see it go above 4GB. That's odd, I think. Looks like it is still caching stuff somewhere, wasting resources, and I was hoping to actually use the memory.

I understand the joke, but come-on, that's just for i7-4770K @ 3.5 GHz, I haven't rated it when it is @ 4.6 GHz yet

It probably will reach 9.0. A higher score would be for the upcoming hexa-core Ivy Bridge Extreme and then Haswell Extreme. But even they should leave couple notches for dual-CPU workstations to top it all the way to 9.9

I am already in trouble trying to put all that power to proper use. Everything I throw at is just flying without any slow down. I use VS2012, debugging app that's using local SQL2012 Express, plus have VMW running in the background, and I don't bother unloading any of those when switching over SC-2 on a break

One thing bothers me though. I switched off virtual memory, but the memory didn't go up after that, not by a tiny step. I got 32GB of fastest RAM, but even with all the load, I cannot see it go above 4GB. That's odd, I think. Looks like it is still caching stuff somewhere, wasting resources, and I was hoping to actually use the memory.

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It may be caching to the SSD rather than the RAM. I do not know why it would do that though.